Taking sides: Inside the Egypt debate

Some harrumphing statements expressing “concern” about a military takeover in Egypt but otherwise staying vague about how the United States will respond to a “very fluid situation” — these bland words are as far as President Barack Obama has been willing to go about a crisis that caught him and most of Washington by surprise.

With the Independence Day holiday over and Congress back to work, pressure will mount this week on Obama and other politicians to go beyond throat-clearing on Egypt and clarify what the United States can or should do in response to the chaos in Cairo, which the administration has so far declined to describe forthrightly as a coup d’etat.

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As the overseas drama forces a U.S. policy debate, the argument is unfolding in ways that scramble familiar partisan and ideological lines.

A coalition that locked arms a decade ago over Iraq — ardent Israel supporters and pro-democracy idealists — already had begun to fray two years ago at the onset of the Arab Spring, a split that now looks to open wide. Israel supporters are happy to see President Mohamed Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood government go; democracy advocates note that his regime, however flawed, was legitimately elected and has now been illegitimately overthrown.

In the meantime, there is no consensus among traditional establishment voices. The Washington Post editorial page denounced the “fecklessness” of Obama’s response, while The New York Times praised his “appropriate caution.”

Obama will find it impossible to avoid making a clear choice. Under U.S. law, the $1.3 billion in American military aid that goes to Egypt must be suspended if Morsi’s forcible ouster and the arrest of his allies are formally declared a coup.

Here is a roster of the emerging Washington camps on the upheaval in Egypt and what the United States ought to do about it. A note of caution: It is not just Obama who is winging it in this crisis, and many people who have expressed views so far have done so with a kind of tentativeness that suggests their views may change. What’s more, some people fall naturally into more than one group.

The ‘good riddance’ caucus

No one typically likes to praise openly a military takeover of an elected government. But a barrage of statements from commentators and elected officials make it clear that there are plenty of people on both left and right who find the military takeover preferable to the status quo under Morsi.

His government, in the words of The Wall Street Journal editorial page, “had descended into incompetence and creeping authoritarianism,” raising fears of “an Islamist dictatorship.”

This is a fight, most observers acknowledge, in which it is hard to cheer for either side. The Egyptian military is known for a self-protective, self-dealing culture in which it has insulated itself from accountability to civilian authority. But the military is regarded — in both Washington and Jerusalem — as a force against religious radicalism and in favor of regional stability.

For this reason, both Republicans and Democrats in this camp would rather keep U.S. aid flowing as a way of maintaining influence within the Egyptian power structure and, with luck, coaxing the generals before too long to restore the Egyptian constitution and civilian rule.

“The Egyptian military has long been a key partner of the United States and a stabilizing force in the region, and is perhaps the only trusted national institution in Egypt today,” House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) said in a statement, voicing one variation on this theme. “The Egyptian people have made clear that President Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood government has threatened the pluralistic democracy for which they called two years ago. As President Obama has said, democracy is about more than elections.”

“This week’s military coup may merely bring Egypt back to where it was: a bloated and dysfunctional superstate controlled by a self-serving military elite,” David Brooks wrote in The New York Times. “But at least radical Islam, the main threat to global peace, has been partially discredited and removed from office.”